The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) Issue A Practice Alert On Preventing Urinary Catheter Infections.

The AACN issued a new
Practice Alertto stress the importance of catheter assessments to help identify early
signs of catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI). This alert
is the latest in a collection of evidence based guidelines issued to standardize
care for hospitalized patients and educate nurses on new trends and health
care advances.

The AACN expects nurses and nursing units to develop written guidelines
for indwelling urinary catheters, use alternatives to indwelling catheters
when possible, provide training programs for catheter insertion techniques,
perform daily reviews regarding the need for continued catheterization,
ensure prompt removal of a catheter when it is no longer needed, implement
surveillance programs and develop plans of action to address any needs
for improvement. The goal is to address other alternatives before using
an indwelling urinary catheter, adhere to strict aseptic technique during
insertion of a catheter, document insertion date, reason for catheter,
date removed and to promptly discontinue urinary catheters when they are
no longer needed.

Indwelling urinary catheters are very beneficial to many hospitalized patients
and are many times used on a short term bases. However, other patients
may require an indwelling urinary catheter for an extended period of time
to assist in keeping urine away from the skin or to accurately monitor
urine output. If a catheter must remain in the patient for an extended
period of time, it could become a breeding ground for bacteria or infections
that have the opportunity to travel up into the bladder. Any bacteria
in the bladder can lead to a urinary tract infection, kidney infection,
pyelonephritis, or urosepsis. Urosepsis occurs when the bacteria that
was in the bladder, invades the blood stream and causes sepsis, blood
poisoning, or an overwhelming infection in the body.
If not treated, sepsis could lead to septic shock and even death.

Practice alerts and protocols such as the one the AACN just released are
extremely valuable and important to help decrease the incidence of injuries
or infections in hospitalized patients, especially critically ill patients.
All too often, the physicians and nurses here at The Beasley Firm, review
cases where a patient had an indwelling catheter that went unmanaged or
an infection untreated that led to sepsis or even death. Just like the AACN,
our experienced medical teams realize the hidden dangers urinary catheters pose if they are not maintained
or removed in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, despite the AACN's
important
Practice Alert on urinary catheter safety, there will be some hospitals, nurses, doctors
or critical care units that sadly, will not implement AACN's recommendations
and patients will continue to develop indwelling catheter infections or sepsis.

If you or a loved one suffered due to a bladder infection caused by a urinary
catheter or developed urosepsis, please feel free to contact one of our
experienced lawyers, doctors or critical care nurses at 1.888.823.5291
for a strictly confidential and free consultation. To date, we have had
numerous million and multi-million dollar verdicts and settlements on
behalf of our injured clients. We were there for them when they needed
us and we are here for you now.

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